Why mental health issue wasn’t raised

One question left hanging over the trial of Adele Sorella, who was convicted Monday of first-degree murder in the deaths of her two daughters, was why her mental health was not presented as a defence. The defence is never obliged to present proof. But when the trial took a short break without the jury present to allow the defence to reflect on whether it would call any witnesses, Superior Court Justice Carol Cohen asked Sorella’s lawyer, Pierre Poupart, if he intended to present “the report.” It was an apparent reference to a psychiatrist’s evaluation that Sorella underwent in Ontario in 2012. Last year, Sorella’s trial was delayed for a year when Poupart revealed his client had yet to undergo a full psychiatric evaluation. Sorella, who was out on bail, was granted special permission at an April 2012 pre-trial hearing to travel to Ontario to see the psychiatrist. While the results were never made public, sources close to the investigation told The Gazette that Sorella would only have been able to claim that she suffered from amnesia after her daughters died. Dr. Sylvain Denis, a psychiatrist, was the only mental health expert to testify during Sorella’s lengthy trial. He examined Sorella briefly when she was taken to a hospital after her arrest by Laval police in 2009. Denis determined Sorella might have been suffering from a dissociative disor- der as a reaction to extreme anxiety. The jury never heard from at least four other doctors who examined Sorella following her arrest. The findings of two experts were revealed during a bail hearing for Sorella on June 23, 2010. Psychiatrist Dr. Gilles Chamberland testified he examined Sorella on a mandate limited to determining whether she was a danger to the public if released. He met with Sorella at the Tanguay detention centre in May 2010. He also consulted a report prepared by a different psychiatrist at the Pinel Institute, in July 2009, conducted to determine if Sorella was fit to stand trial. The psychiatrist at Pinel diagnosed her as being chronically suicidal, “where death is always an option.” Because she was diagnosed as suicidal, Sorella was placed in the infirmary at the Tanguay detention centre after leaving the Pinel Institute in 2009. Chamberland testified Sorella expressed concerns because she felt she was surrounded by women with mental health problems who might cause her harm. He concurred that she appeared to be a stable person among unstable women in the infirmary. Also at that point, Chamberland said, Sorella was acknowledging that her daughters were dead. “She realizes her kids are gone but to her it is like a dream, like it didn’t really happen,” Chamberland said during the bail hearing. He also testified that cases of dissociative disorder are rare.